1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for conducting incentive programs and systems and methods for fulfilling awards and prizes won in incentive programs.
The present invention relates more particularly to systems and methods for conducting incentive programs over computer networks, such as the Internet.
2. Description of Related Art
Incentive award programs, in which incentive companies contract with sponsoring companies for programs to promote sales of the sponsoring companies' products or services, are well-known. Incentive programs include discount coupon programs; customer loyalty programs, such as frequent flyer programs, and promotional games, such as sweepstakes prizes, scratch-and-win games, and the like, in which a sponsoring company's products or services are won by successful participation in the incentive program.
Incentive programs offer awards and incentives to modify behavior of individual consumers and to direct the consumers to some pre-determined action, such as purchase of products or services upon visiting a retail site, viewing advertising, testing a product, or the like. Companies use awards and incentives to increase awareness of product offerings, to launch new products, to attract the attention of a newly identified audience, to differentiate products to encourage certain behavior, to obtain information, and for other purposes.
Traditional incentive programs systems suffer drawbacks in terms of convenience of tracking data, changing promotions, and the like. For example, for a consumer who participates in multiple incentive programs it may take time and effort to track his or her participation in each program. For example, time is required to keep track of loyalty points earned in each separate incentive program. Therefore, when a consumer receives an offer to participate in an incentive program, the consumer may decide against participating in it, not because the incentive program is not attractive, but because the cost to the consumer, in terms of the time and effort to tracking another incentive program, exceeds the expected benefit of the incentive program. Accordingly, a consumer need has arisen for a streamlined system and method for tracking consumer participation in a variety of incentive programs from different sponsors.
A similar problem exists for sponsoring companies who wish to offer promotions. The collective costs of generating incentive programs, administering the incentive programs, tracking the participation of consumers in the incentive programs and fulfilling the awards or prizes won in such incentive programs may exceed the benefits of offering the incentive program. These costs may be particularly high in instances where the activities associated with an incentive program must be carried out by different companies, or by different organizations within the same company. Accordingly, a need has arisen for a unified system that provides for program generation and administration, data tracking and award fulfillment.
Existing incentive programs do not meet all of the consumer and sponsor needs associated with incentive programs. One form of incentive program that is used extensively is that of promotional mailings. The processing of promotions, i.e., providing the appropriate check or discount coupon to the customer as a reward for the initial purchase, involves high volume and labor intensive activity, including collection, verification and organization of initial proofs of purchase and related information, preparation of the checks, coupons or other items using preprinted stock provided by the sponsor in connection with the particular promotion, and finally the sorting of individual items based on their mailing destinations.
At any given time, a typical provider of promotion services is involved with many different promotions of various sponsoring manufacturers. Preprinted forms, when provided by different sponsors, can vary in size and shape, thus creating the need to handle individual promotions separately. This increases handling expense, not only in added labor, but also in the mailing cost, as it is difficult with a single promotion to accumulate a volume of items sufficient to qualify for certain reduced postage rates, e.g. the reduced rate available for mail presorted by zip code of the destination. Manual recombination and sorting of items for multiple promotions would be prohibitively expensive.
Another form of promotional program is coupon distribution and redemption. Many problems exist with the coupon distribution and redemption system. For example, few consumers will go through all the steps necessary to redeem their coupons. More commonly, many consumers forget to bring coupons that they have clipped and saved to the store. Thus, consumer reluctance to take all necessary steps partially defeats the manufacturer's purpose for offering the purchase incentive. A manufacturer distributes coupons with the expectation that the coupons will induce sales of its product by offering a discount. However, when the coupon is forgotten or disregarded, the consumer is usually not aware of the incentive when he is selecting a product among different brands at the retail store.
Another problem with coupon redemption systems is verification. Because the verification of redemption conditions is performed by a check-out clerk, a consumer can in some instances present so many coupons that it is impractical to verify the required purchases for all of them. As a result, some coupons are redeemed without the required purchase.
The introduction of the digital computer and the computer network eliminates some of the inconveniences of conventional incentive programs, particularly those that relate to data tracking and manipulation. The digital computer is a powerful data processing tool that allows a user to organize, store and analyze data at volumes and rates that would be impossible by any prior known techniques.
Computers have been used in connection with incentive programs and other programs that have characteristics in common with incentive programs, but known computer incentive programs address some, but not all of the drawbacks of traditional promotions. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,053,955 to Peach et al. discloses an improved process of printing and assembling coupons. Peach et al. discloses a computer-based system for merging certain information for various promotions, so that a single stream of data can be used as a source for printing and mailing coupons for multiple promotions. Thus, the system of Peach et al. reduces some of the paperwork associated with a single-promotion systems, but it merely mitigates, rather than solves, the problems inherent in paper-based promotions.
Computer-based promotional games are also known. Such games include scratch-and-win games, treasure hunts, video pinball and the like. Such incentive programs have advantages over paper promotions, in that data regarding participation is easily stored and manipulated. However, existing incentive programs do not solve all consumer and sponsor needs. In particular, such promotional games do not assist consumers in tracking participation in multiple promotions and do not assist sponsors in generating incentive programs, tracking participation in incentive programs and fulfilling awards and prizes.
Computer-based systems exist for tracking some aspects of consumer participation in incentive programs. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,019 to Schultz et al. discloses an automated purchase reward accounting system and method. In particular, Schultz et al. discloses a marketing method for providing manufacturer purchase reward offers by automatically tracking the purchases of member consumers through the use of bar-coded membership cards and using the purchase records in a data processing system to determine if the required purchases have been made to earn a reward. Each member consumer receives a reward booklet disclosing the available reward offers, a periodic status report indicating the member consumer's progress toward earning rewards, and a reward certificate for those rewards earned. The card-based system of Schultz takes advantage of certain data processing capabilities of computer systems and certain data storage capabilities of electronic card technologies; however, among other drawbacks, the system of Schultz does not address the need for a system that assists sponsor companies in generating incentive programs, in tracking participation of consumers in multiple incentive programs, or in fulfilling awards.
The computer network offers the possibility of improved systems for offering incentive programs and for tracking participation in an incentive program. By linking together several computers and by providing shared resources and cross-platform communications, the computer network provides improved access to sophisticated applications by users at remote locations.
One of the most widely accepted and heavily used networks is the Internet. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks formed into a single world wide network. A user, through the Internet, can interactively transmit messages with users in different countries. Similarly, a user in the U.S. connected to files and libraries and other jurisdictions such as Europe and Asia, can download files for personal use. Accordingly, the Internet computer network provides strong communications functions similar to the communications functions provided by ham radio operators. Moreover, the Internet computer network acts like a universal library, providing electronic access to resources and information available from Internet sites throughout the world.
Various systems and methods are known which permit a sponsor to track data of multiple parties in databases and to update information in the databases based on transactions entered into by the parties to the transactions. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,664,115 to Fraser discloses an interactive computer system to match buyers and sellers of real estate using the Internet. Similarly, banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions have developed computer-based systems that track client account information and update the information upon entry of various transactions. Some such systems involve use of electronic cards and operate over computer networks. Such systems have requirements peculiar to their respective industries, and none of the existing systems address all of the problems inherent in known incentive programs, particularly the problem of the need for an incentive program system that conveniently tracks participation while offering automated generation of incentive programs and automated fulfillment of awards won in incentive programs.
Computer incentive programs are offered on the Internet; however, such systems are generally offered by a single sponsor and are generally limited to offering consumers the ability to participate in incentive programs. Known systems do not offer sponsors the ability to conveniently generate incentive programs, to track participation of consumers in multiple incentive programs, or to provide for automated fulfillment of awards.
Another important drawback of known computer incentive program systems is that the obligation to fulfill the awards promised in a promotional campaign is often a logistically difficult and expensive task. The coordination of delivering or arranging for the retrieval of the awards for the specified winner, in volumes that permit successful incentive programs, requires coordination of prize inventory, systems and information.
One system that addresses award fulfillment is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,025,372 to Burton, et al. Burton et al. discloses a system and method for administration of incentive award programs through letters of credit. In the Burton et al. system, a computer system for an incentive award program allocates monetary amounts available for expenditure through credit instruments issued to program participants when the participants perform to a designated level of achievement. Participants' identifying information and credit instrument account numbers are stored in memory. Levels of performance are calculated and assigned for each participant in order for a monetary amount to be available for expenditure through the participant's credit instrument. Calculations, adjustment and reporting concerning amounts allocated for instrument use, withheld amounts, instrument transactions and account balances are made. Calculations and printed invoices for payment by a financial institution to an incentive company based on the credit instruments issued under the incentive program are made and are dependent upon the monetary volume of expenditures through the credit instruments, the total interest income on the credit instruments, and the number of instruments issued.
The system of Burton et al. takes some advantage of a computer system for tracking data, but it has a number of drawbacks. Among other things, Burton et al. offers no advantage to a company sponsoring an incentive program in terms of the investment of skill and labor in developing an incentive program. Further, the complex letter of credit scheme of Burton et al. is likely to require participation of other entities, such as banks and attorneys in order for it to operate properly. Also, Burton et al. does not provide for tracking of data for participation of a given consumer in incentive programs of multiple program providers. Finally, Burton et al. does not provide a system for automated generation of incentive programs.
Many existing promotional systems are also subject to the drawback that they require specific computer software or computer hardware to be purchased in order to participate in the incentive program. Historically, computer promotional games were of limited utility, because in order to participate the user was required to purchase specific software to participate in the incentive program, and no convenient mechanism existed to convey the information that the customer had won a prize to the party who was required to fulfill the prize.
Computer networks, such as the Internet, offer a convenient solution to some of these problems, permitting easy transmission of such computer software for promotional games and easy transmission of information about the success of the consumer to the sponsoring company. However, current incentive program and award systems available over the Internet are quite limited. First, most such systems are limited to a specific type of incentive program or to products and services of a single sponsoring company. Also, most such systems require a sponsoring company to use an independent contractor to code the computer software necessary for running the incentive program. Further, most such systems rely on conventional mechanisms for award fulfillment, such as issuing a paper certificate to the customer by mail that is redeemable at a retail location of the sponsoring company.
Computer systems and methods for generation of computer software programs based on underlying data are also known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,576,951 to Lockwood discloses an automated sales and services system that composes individualized sales presentations from various textual and graphical information data sources to match customer profiles entered into the system. However, known computer systems do not provide for automatic generation of incentive programs based on parameters entered by a sponsor company.
Accordingly, a need has arisen for an incentive program and award fulfillment system that provides easy access to consumers who have standard computer hardware and software, that permits sponsors to build or purchase incentive programs easily and efficiently, and that provides for convenient tracking of participation and convenient, automated award fulfillment.